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Literary Dictionary:

illocutionary act

illocutionary act, an utterance that accomplishes something in the act of speaking. In the speech act theory proposed by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words (1962), an utterance involves not only the simple ‘locutionary’ act of producing a grammatical sentence, but also an ‘illocutionary force’ of effectiveness either as an affirmation or as a promise, a threat, a warning, a command, etc. The most explicit illocutionary acts are the performatives, which accomplish the very deed to which they refer, when uttered by authorized speakers in certain conditions: ‘I arrest you in the name of the law’; ‘I hereby renounce the Devil and all his works’; ‘I promise to defend and uphold the constitution.’ See also perlocutionary.

 
 
Philosophy Dictionary: illocutionary act

(illocutionary force) Term introduced by J. L. Austin, in his book How to Do Things with Words, for an act done in uttering what one does. Thus in saying ‘I promise’ in suitable circumstances I make a promise; in saying ‘Hooray!’ I cheer you on, and so forth. The illocutionary act is distinguished from anything effected by the utterance (its perlocutionary force): it makes no difference to the fact that I promised or cheered whether you believe my promise or are heartened at my cheering. Austin alerted philosophers to the possibility that certain terms might be treated illocutionarily. For example, in saying ‘I know that p’ I give you my word that p. It may well be that this insight sheds a different light on the traditional problems of defining knowledge, which assume that knowledge is a special state, described by one who says truly that she knows that p. See also speech acts.

 
Wikipedia: illocutionary act

Illocutionary act is a technical term introduced by John L. Austin in investigations concerning what he calls 'performative' and 'constative utterances'. According to Austin's original exposition in How to Do Things With Words, an illocutionary act is an act (1) for the performance of which I must make it clear to some other person that the act is performed (Austin speaks of the 'securing of uptake'), and (2) the performance of which involves the production of what Austin calls 'conventional consequences' as, e.g., rights, commitments, or obligations. For example, in order to successfully perform a promise I must make clear to my audience that the promise occurs, and undertake an obligation to do the promised thing: hence promising is an illocutionary act in the present sense. However, for certain reasons, among them insufficient knowledge of Austin's original exposition, the term 'illocutionary act' is nowadays understood in a number of other ways.

Many define the term with reference to examples, saying such things as that any speech act like stating, asking, commanding, promising, and so on is an illocutionary act; they then often fail to give any sense of the expression illocutionary act capable of making clear what being an illocutionary act essentially consists in.

It is also often emphasised that Austin introduced the illocutionary act by means of a contrast with other kinds of acts: the illocutionary act, he says, is an act performed in saying something, as contrasted with a locutionary act, the act of saying something, and also contrasted with a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something.

Still another conception of an illocutionary act goes back to Schiffer's famous book 'Meaning' (1972, 103), in which the illocutionary act is represented as just the act of meaning something.

According to the conception Bach and Harnish adopt in 'Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts' (1979), an illocutionary act is an attempt to communicate, which they again analyse as the expressing of an attitude.

According to a widespread opinion, an adequate and useful account of "illocutionary acts" has been provided by John R. Searle (e.g., 1969, 1979). In recent years, however, it has repeatedly been doubted whether Searle's account is well-founded. A wide-ranging critique is in F C Doerge Illocutionary Acts[1]. Whole collections of articles examining Searle's account are: Burkhardt 1990 [2] and Lepore / van Gulick 1991[3].

Illocutionary force

Several speech act theorists, including Austin himself, make use of the notion of an illocutionary force. In Austin's original account, the notion remains rather unclear. Some followers of Austin, such as David Holdcroft, view illocutionary force as the property of an utterance to be made with the intention to perform a certain illocutionary act -- rather than as the successful performance of the act (which is supposed to further require the appropriateness of certain circumstances). According to this conception, my utterance of "I bet you five pounds that it will rain" may well have an illocutionary force even if you don't hear me. However, Bach and Harnish assume illocutionary force just in case this or that illocutionary act is actually (successfully) performed. According to this conception, you must have heard and understood that the speaker intends to make a bet with you in order for the utterance to have 'illocutionary force'.

If we adopt the notion of illocutionary force as an aspect of meaning, then it appears that the (intended) 'force' of certain sentences, or utterances, is not quite obvious. If someone says, "It sure is cold in here", there are several different illocutionary acts that might be aimed at by the utterance. The utterer might intend to describe the room, in which case the illocutionary force would be that of 'describing'. But she might also intend to criticise someone who should have kept the room warm. Or it might be meant as a request to someone to close the window. These forces may be interrelated: it may be by way of stating that the temperature is too cold that one criticises someone else. Such a performance of an illocutionary act by means of the performance of another is referred to as an indirect speech act.

Illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs)

Searle and Vanderveken (1985) often speak about what they call 'illocutionary force indicating devices' (IFIDs). These are supposed to be elements, or aspects of linguistic devices which indicate either (dependent on which conceptions of "illocutionary force" and "illocutionary act" are adopted) that the utterance is made with a certain illocutionary force, or else that it constitutes the performance of a certain illocutionary act. In English, for example, the interrogative mood is supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a question; the directive mood indicates that the utterance is (intended as) a directive illocutionary act (an order, a request, etc.); the words "I promise" are supposed to indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a promise. Possible IFIDs in English include: word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and performative verbs.

Illocutionary negations

Another notion Searle and Vanderveken use is that of an 'illocutionary negation'. The difference of such an 'illocutionary negation' to a 'propositional negation' can be explained by reference to the difference between "I do not promise to come" and "I promise not to come". The first is an illocutionary negation - the 'not' negates the promise. The second is a propositional negation. In the view of Searle and Vanderveken, illocutionary negations change the type of illocutionary act.

See also

References

  1. ^ Doerge (Friedrich Christoph), Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It Tuebingen University (2006) [1]
  2. ^ Burkhardt, Armin (ed.), Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990.
  3. ^ Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds): John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991.
  • Alston, William P.. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaka: Cornell University Press. 2000
  • Austin, John L.. How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975 ISBN 0-19-281205-X
  • Burkhardt, Armin (ed.). Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990 ISBN 0-89925-357-1
  • Doerge, Friedrich Christoph. Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It. Tuebingen 2006. [2]
  • Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds). John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991. ISBN 0-631-15636-4
  • Searle, John R.. Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. 1969 ISBN 0-521-07184-4
  • Searle, John R.. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge University Press. 1979 ISBN 0-521-22901-4
  • Searle, John R. and Daniel Vanderveken. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge University Press. 1985. ISBN 0-521-26324-7

 
 

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Literary Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Illocutionary act" Read more

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